We’ve gone forward with republishing our agitaional broadsheet. Now renamed, Anarchist
Revolution/Revolución Anarquista. The broadsheet reflects the issues, organizing and
struggles we and the movements we are a part of are engaged in. The Jan/Feb issue has
short articles on struggles in Minneapolis, Detroit & Chicago. ---- ANARCHIST REVOLUTION
---- We need a different kind of world – a world without war, exploitation, oppression and
ecological devastation. We believe those conditions stem from a social system that
ultimately favors only a small ruling class and that they won’t give up their profits or
power without a struggle. Their system promotes a dog-eat-dog culture and seriously risks
a common catastrophe for us all. To live and love, we must fight. Anarchism is a
revolutionary vision for life without bosses, landlords, police, racism or rape. It is
also a method for organizing in the here and now based on solidarity, mutual aid, and
direct action. M1´s affinity is built around four principles:

Over the last year and a half the murder of young
Black people by the police has sparked a
powerful movement against white supremacy
and police brutality. While many different
strategies and agendas have been in play, the
high points of this on-going struggle have seen
Black working-class communities assert a total
rejection of the racist police and a refusal to
allow anyone to set limits over the movement.

In Ferguson/St. Louis MO, Baltimore MD and
more recently in Minneapolis MN protesters
have carried out a militant struggle against the
police and the system they protect. Now
Chicago seems to have entered a moment of
crisis too, where the community is also saying
“No more!”.

In Minneapolis, anarchists, Wobblies and other
radicals have actively participated in the
upsurge in response to the police murder of 25
year-old African-American truck driver Jamar
Clark there: joining in mass direct action
protests and militant resistance, advocating and
organizing for community self-defense, forging
unity and support for families of those murdered
by police, researching and exposing the racist
president of the Police Federation and the
dangers of “bad-jacketing” within the
movement, and building relationships with
militants from the community and the movement.

The close to 1000 fatalities in the U.S. this year
from police shootings are not a case of a few bad
apples. The role of the police is not to “serve
and protect” our communities, but rather to
intimidate and contain us. The police are one of
the main tools used by the rich and powerful to
maintain this racist, unfair and unequal system.
So this is nothing new, but it has become too
much. The government doesn’t respond to
passive please for justice, but it can be made to
pay a social cost for injustice.

Direct Action in Minneapolis

The movement in Minneapolis marched on the 4th
Precinct Police Station in the heart of the northside
Black community, occupying the front vestibule and
setting up an encampment on the surrounding streets
and sidewalks for 18 days. When police first tested
the resolve of the protest by forcibly removing the
occupiers and some of the encampment, protesters
responded by blockading all of the Precinct’s
entryways, keeping the cops penned in the building.
Police power-sprayed mace and shot chalk at the
crowds. Many protesters answered with rocks and
bottles. A mobile police surveillance camera tower
was pulled over by neighborhood rebels, forming a
barricade. Protesters continued to lay siege to the
Precinct for several hours.

Some organizers tried to stop this militant reaction.
They insisted that the protests must be non-violent.
They blamed “outside agitators” and “white
anarchists”. This was a lie that sought to erase the
leading role of militants from the neighborhood, as
well as Black and other anarchists of color, and also
aimed to isolate and eject white radicals that had
joined in. The overwhelming impetus for the fightback
that night came from Black northsiders. They
didn’t need to be agitated by anyone. The unity of
Black militants from the community and multi-racial
radicals in the street, fighting back, was very
powerful.

Community Self-Defense

On the night of November 23rd white supremacist
fascists attacked the protest encampment in
Minneapolis, shooting and wounding 5 protesters..
Black community militants responded the next night
by ensuring that the protest encampment was safe.
Serious barricades of firewood were built in the
street and a well equipped but low-key security
network posted up on the edges of the protest.
Multi-racial working-class defense groups
integrated into the neighborhood defense structure.
Any further fascist attackers would have been very
sorry.

While we strongly advocate and participate in movements for
justice for victims of police murder and brutality, we cannot just
continue to respond to each tragic injustice – we need to promote
and build for community self-defense. Beyond monitoring the
police and providing security for the movement and certain
neighborhoods, community self-defense projects can begin
addressing some real issues that lead folks to call the cops today
such as domestic violence and mental crises. These projects must
be open to democratic discussion and decision-making and
accountable to the communities they are based in. And finally we
need an understanding of what we are up against and what it will
take to win.

For us, as anarchists, that means a revolutionary struggle,
controlled by the grassroots (not by top-down leaders), against
this system of exploitation and oppression and the government
and police that protects it. It’s a big task, and Community SelfDefense
is where we begin. – Kdog (Minnesota M1)